K. NICHOLSON SINGH 31
WONGKIEI KOIJAM LEIKAI, MANIPUR Inventor
K. NICHOLSON SINGH, 31, turned an innovator out of a sense of guilt. In 2002, a stray dog he used to often feed, died of shock after it accidentally sat on a naked wire at his electrical repair shop.
He did not tell anyone how it had died, but shut shop for a month, refusing to speak to friends and family. “It was my carelessness, but it made me want to find a remedy. I asked my father, an electrician himself, if there was any device that absorbed electric shocks. He had no answer. I checked local libraries, but it was a waste of time,” says Singh, who won the Grassroots Innovator Award in 2009 from the National Innovation Foundation for designing an electric shock- proof converter.
Though not marketed commercially yet, it comes in various sizes, depending on the voltage rating of the device. “The principle is simple. I use a magnetic field to make the surge shock- proof. You plug one end of the converter to the power source, the other end to any device— fridge, TV, iron or even naked wires— and you won’t get a shock,” he explains. Born on March 25, 1981, in village Wongkiei Koijam Leikai, 5 km from Imphal, Singh was exposed to the world of electricity from childhood, as Indrajit, his father, was an electrician at Imphal’s RIMS Hospital. “I learnt practical aspects of the trade from my father. But he could never explain how things worked. For that, while in Class VIII, I trained for three months under Momom Singh of ITI.” In 2000, Singh borrowed money from friends to start his shop. It was here that three years later, fate intervened, and he ended up designing the converter.